Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/816

This page needs to be proofread.
780
DAL—DAL

in which the Dake of Wellington supported the Marquis of Dal- housie, will find the facts in Minutes of the Resignation of the late General Sir Charles Napier of the Command of the Army in India, (John Murray, 1854).

(g. sm.)

DALIN, Olof von (1708-1763), a Swedish poet, was born August 29, 1708, in the parish of Vinberg, in Halland, being the son of the incumbent. His mother was the daughter of a Dr Ause n, to whom Queen Christina had offered, during her exile in Rome, a cardinal s hat if he joined the Romish Church. He was also nearly related to a still more remarkable man. Rydelius, the philosophical bishop of Lund, and the young Dalin was sent at a very early age to be instructed by him, Linnaeus being one of his fellow-pupils. The quick instinct of Rydelius instantly perceived the boy s extraordinary genius, and he assisted its development in every possible way. While studying deeply ab Lund, Dalin had visited Stockholm in the year 1723, and in 1726 he proceeded thither for the purpose of entering one of the public offices. Under the patronage of Baron Ralamb he rapidly rose to preferment, and his skill and intelligence won him golden opinions. It was at the age of twenty-four that he commenced his literary career by the publication of a work that was entirely new at that time in Sweden, namely the famous Argus, a weekly journal, founded on the model of Addison s Spectator. For the two years 1733, 1734, Dalin issued his brilliant paper; at the end of 1733 he had thought to give it over, but he was forced to continue by the impor tunity of the public. It was not till 1736 that the secret was known, and Dalin confessed that he had been the writer of Argus. His reputation thereupon became immense. His next work was Tankar omKritiker (Thoughts about Critics), the first really aesthetic book brought out in Sweden. With the avowed purpose of enlarging the horizon of his cultivation and tastes, Dalin set off, in com pany with his pupil, Baron Ralamb s son, on a tour through Germany and France, in 1739-40. On his return the shifting of political life at home caused him to write his famous satiric allegories of The Story of the Horse and April-Work, which were very popular, and provoked countless imitations. He now set himself to work on the most considerable of his writings, his didactic epos of 8vensJca .friheten (Swedish Liberty), which first appeared in 1742. Hitherto Addison and Pope had been his models ; in this work he draws his inspiration from Thomson, whose poem of Liberty it emulated. In 1751 Dalin received the honourable post of tutor to the crown prince, afterwards Gustavus III., and gained the friendship of the literary Crown Princess Louisa Ulrika. His position at court gave rise to many personal inconveniences, and separated him to a vexatious degree from the studies in which he had hitherto been absorbed. He held the post of tutor to the crown prince until 1756, when he was arrested on suspicion of having taken part in the attempted revolution of that year, and tried for his life. He was acquitted, but was forbidden on any pretence to show him self at court. This period of exile, which lasted until 1761, Dalin spent in the preparation of his great historical work. He had been ennobled in 1751, and made privy counsellor in 1753 ; and now, in 1761, he once more took his place at court. During his exile, however, his spirit and his health had been broken; in a fit of panic he had destroyed some packets of his best unpublished works, and this he constantly brooded over. On the 12th of August 1763 he died at his house in Drottninghnlm. In the year 1767 his writings in belles lettres were issued in six volumes, edited by Bokman, his half-brother. Amid an enormous mass of occasional verses, anagrams, epigrams, impromptus, and the like, his satires and serious poems were almost buried. But some of these former, even, are found to be songs of remarkable grace and delicacy, and many display a love of natural scenery and a knowledge of its forms truly remark able in that artificial age. His dramas also are of interest, particularly his admirable comedy of The Envious Man ; he also wrote a tragedy, Brynhilda, or the Unfortunate Love, and a pastoral in three scenes on King Adolphus Frederick s return from Finland. During the early part of his life he was universally admitted to be facile princeps among the Swedish poets of his time ; in his later days the extravagant reputation of the poetess Hedvig Nordennychfc somewhat eclipsed his glory. He possessed a singular mixture of the literary qualities which we attribute severally to Pope, to Voltaire, and to Thomson. As a prose writer, Dalin is chiefly memorable for his History of the Swedish Kingdom, which proceeds to the end of the reign of Charles IX.

DALKEITH, a burgh of barony and market-town of Scotland, in the county of Edinburgh, situated between the North and South Esk, 6J miles south-east of Edinburgh. The town is for the most part clean and well-built. The principal church, an old Gothic edifice, was originally the castle chapel; in 1406 it was raised to the dignity of a collegiate church, and after the Reformation it became the parish kirk. A new church in the Early English style, with a steeple 167 feet high, was built by the duke ot Buccleuch in 1840; and there is an Episcopal chapel within the palace grounds. Dalkeith has one of the largest corn-markets in Scotland, held every Thursday. There are extensive corn-mills, breweries, iron-foundries, a brass- foundry, brickworks, and tanneries. In the vicinity is Dalkeith palace, the principal seat of the duke of Buccleuch. surrounded by an extensive park. It was the temporary residence of Charles I. in 1633, of George IV. in 1822, and of Queen Victoria in 1842. Population in 1871, 6386.

DALLING AND BULWER, Baron (1801-1872). William Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer, better known during the chief part of his long and brilliant career in diplomacy, politics, and literature as Sir Henry Bulwer, was born in Baker Street, Portman Square, London, on Friday the 13th February 1801. Upon both sides Lord Dalling s line age was illustrious ; his father s house traced back their ancestry to the Vikings of the North, and his mother s claimed descent from the Tudors and Plantagenets. Gene ral Bulwer, when colonel of the 106th Regiment, had been married to Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, who as the only offspring of Richard Warburton Lytton, of Kneb worth Park, in the county of Hertford was sole heiress of the family of Norreys-Robinson-Lytton of Monacdhu in the island of Anglesea and of Guersylt in Denbighshire. Her father, Warburton Lytton, was noteworthy in his generation. As an Oriental linguist he became the intimate friend of Sir William Jones ; he was besides the favourite pupil of Dr Samuel Parr, who used to brag of him as inferior only to himself and perhaps Person in classical erudition. Three sons were the fruit of General Bulwer s marriage with the heiress of the Lyttons. The second of those three sons, Henry, afterwards Lord Dalling, having been amply provided for by his selection as heir to his maternal grandmother, while the paternal estates in Norfolk went in due course, by right of primogeniture, to his elder brother William, the maternal property in Herts passed into the possession of the youngest of the three brothers, Edward, known first as Bulwer the novelist and dramatist, and afterwards as the first Baron Lytton of Knebworth.

Lord Dalling s father was so far notable in his military

capacity that, as brigadier-general of volunteers, he was ono of the four commanding officers to whom was intrusted the defence of England in 1804, when threatened with

invasion by the great Napoleon. Three years afterward?,